You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and this is Bookworm.

This week, I'm very honored and pleased to have as my guest, Joyce Carol Oates.

We've come to her hotel room at the guest quarters hotel on the occasion of the reading performance

of two of her recent one-act plays,

but we'll be talking about two of her recent books as well,

because it is bitter and because it is my heart, soon to be published by Penguin,

and I shut my door upon myself by Echo Press. I thought I'd start by asking a question that may not be

answerable, probably a good kind, about blood. Frequently in italics, in your book, many of them.

There'll be talk about secret blood, and in I shut my door upon myself, the epigram

appears that blood is memory without consciousness.

Can you talk a bit about blood?

In the way in which I'm using it, it's a sort of generic term that means inherited predilections.

To what extent are our personalities inherited in the genes and in the DNA?

And to what extent are we free? Is it some sort of composite of the two? he's inherited in the genes and in the DNA.

And to what extent are we free?

Is it some sort of composite of the two?

And because it is bitter and because it is my heart,

and I lock my door upon myself,

...